A criminal court in Limassol, Cyprus, on Thursday sentenced Hezbollah operative Hossam Taleb Yaacoub to ???four years ??? in prison for plotting to kill Israeli tourists on the small island. The prison sentence wraps up a criminal process that began last July when Yaacoub was arrested.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that he has ten days to appeal his conviction. Yaacoub admitted that he observed Israeli flights land in Cyprus and documented the movements of Israelis and locations where they stayed.

The conviction of Yaacoub may add greater urgency to the EU talks to include Hezbollah in its terror list. EU countries such as Austria and Germany have blocked a listing of Hezbollah because of insufficient legal evidence showing Hezbollah engages in terrorism. The Cyprus conviction represents the first conviction of a Hezbollah member in a European court.Twenty four-year-old Yaacoub is a Swedish-Lebanese citizen who used France and the Netherlands as locations to carry out work for Hezbollah, according to his testimony at the trial. He was convicted on five of eight criminal charges. Yaacoub was arrested just days before an alleged Iran-Hezbollah operation blew up an Israeli tour bus in Bulgaria.Two alleged Hezbollah operatives participated in the bombing of a tour bus in the Black Sea resort of Burgas in July 2012, which killed five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver. The suspects are believed to be in Lebanon. Both Hezbollah operatives used European locations to carry out their terror attack, including travelling through Poland and Romania.The then-Bulgarian interior minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, announced in February that Hezbollah operatives had been responsible for the Burgas attack. Tsvetanov said the two suspected Burgas perpetrators “were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah” and added that investigators had found information “showing the financing and connection between Hezbollah and the two suspects.”France has resisted including Hezbollah in the EU terror list because it fears that it will lose diplomatic leverage in Lebanon. The Netherlands lists Hezbollah’s entire organization as a terror entity. The United Kingdom labels Hezbollah’s military wing as terrorist group.

Daniel Schwammenthal..Wall Street Journal..02 August ’12..When terrorists struck in Bulgaria last month, killing five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver, Jerusalem immediately accused Hezbollah and its Iranian paymasters of the crime. Tehran and Hezbollah, as always, denied it. But no matter who carried out this atrocity on European Union territory, the EU’s continued refusal to put Hezbollah on its terror list is simply indefensible.Not designating the group as a terrorist organization gives the pioneers of Islamist suicide bombings the opportunity to organize, recruit and raise funds throughout the Continent. There are about 950 Hezbollah members and supporters in Germany alone, according to Berlin’s domestic intelligence service. Hezbollah has also sent operatives from Europe to Israel for terror attacks.Placing the group on the EU’s terrorist list would allow authorities to freeze Hezbollah assets and increase cross-border cooperation in fighting their crimes. Raising or providing funds for Hezbollah terrorists within EU territory would become a criminal offense. Police and judicial authorities would have greater powers to work with their colleagues in other member states, for example in sharing evidence or information about movements and activities of Hezbollah operatives. Law enforcement agencies would also have more possibilities to investigate and curtail Hezbollah activities in the EU, such as by suppressing the recruitment of new members.When Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman last week urged Europe to finally do the right thing, the foreign minister of Cyprus, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, had the unenviable task of having to enunciate the EU’s incomprehensible position: “Should there be tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism, the EU would consider listing the organization,” Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis said during a joint press conference in Brussels.Can there really be any reasonable doubt among EU officials about the true nature of Hezbollah? Back in 1983, 58 French peacekeeping troops alongside 241 U.S. marines were butchered in Hezbollah suicide bombings in Beirut, followed by the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in the Lebanese capital, according to U.S. officials. Argentina accused the group of killing 85 people in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, underscoring its global reach.Hezbollah also supports organizations that are already on the EU terrorist list, such as Hamas. In addition, Syrian regime defectors have revealed that thousands of Hezbollah men (and Iranians) are in Syria as “military consultants” for President Bashar Assad, keeping themselves busy killing protestors. They supplied the same murderous services to Iran to put down the 2009 “Green Revolution.” And for decades Hezbollah has terrorized hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians, indiscriminately raining missiles on men, women and children, murdering scores in the process.This is why the U.S., Canada and Australia, as well as the Netherlands and the U.K.—two EU “renegades”—have already added Hezbollah to their terror lists. Likewise, the European Parliament passed a resolution in 2005 by a vote of 475 to eight, stating “that clear evidence exists of terrorist activities by Hezbollah. The [EU] Council should take all necessary steps to curtail them.”That the EU still hasn’t done so must be due to a lack of political will, rather than a lack of evidence. Hezbollah is “an organization that comprises a political party and a social services network as well as an armed wing,” Ms. Kozakou-Marcoullis said last week, recounting official EU policy. “Hezbollah is active in Lebanese politics, including the parliament and the government, and plays a specific role with regard to the status quo in Lebanon.”Let’s have a quick look at that “specific role.” Last year, the United Nations tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri issued arrest warrants for four Hezbollah members for carrying out the truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 other people. In 2008, Hezbollah took over Western Beirut in what the government at the time called a “bloody coup.” In the ensuing fighting, about 100 people, many of them civilians, were killed.Is this really the sort of “status quo” the EU wants to continue validating? Created and funded by Tehran, Hezbollah serves the interest of the two most oppressive regimes left standing in the region: Iran and Syria. How does this square with the EU’s “New Strategy for a Changing European Neighborhood,” which promises Arabs that their “struggle for democracy, dignity, prosperity and safety from persecution would be supported by Europe?”The artificial distinction between Hezbollah’s “armed wing,” as the EU so delicately puts it, and the organization’s “political” or “social” activities is meaningless. Hezbollah is a terror group to its core. Even when pretending to play the political game, it doesn’t operate like a democratic party but like the terrorist gang it is, intimidating voters and murdering and torturing rivals to advance the interests of Tehran and Damascus.By adding Hezbollah to its terror list, the EU could thus simultaneously strike a blow against international terrorism and for Arab democracy. It would not only undercut its fundraising but also its claims for respectability. The EU’s continued engagement with Hezbollah confers on the group undeserved international recognition, which helps it to sell its terror as “resistance” and its service to Tehran as legitimate Lebanese politics. By naming and shaming Hezbollah, the EU would help isolate it, diminishing its attraction both at home and abroad.Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah himself said a few years ago that such a move would “destroy” the organization as “[t]he sources of our funding will dry up and the sources of moral, political and material support will be destroyed.” Europe has the power and moral obligation to finally facilitate this destruction.Link:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443866404577563151864043044.htmlMr. Schwammenthal is director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute in Brussels.

(gatestoneinstitute.org)The upgrade, which comes amid a barrage of unending criticism of Israel’s policies, in fact appears aimed at increasing Israel’s economic dependence on the European Union, with the objective of enhancing the bloc’s leverage over the State of Israel. Authored by EU delegations to the Palestinian Authority, the document includes severe recommendations meant to strengthen Palestinian control over East Jerusalem and coerce Israel to change its policy in the West Bank. The document is unprecedented in that it deals with internal Israeli issues.

The European Union has upgraded trade and diplomatic relations with Israel in more than 60 activities and fields, including agriculture, energy and immigration.But the wide-ranging boost to bilateral relations, which was announced at the annual EU-Israel Association Council meeting in Brussels on July 24, is unlikely to end the deep-seated hostility European officialdom harbors towards the Jewish state.The move, which comes amid an unending barrage of European criticism of Israeli policies in the West Bank, Gaza and within Israel itself, in fact appears aimed at increasing Israel’s economic dependence upon the European Union, with the objective of enhancing the bloc’s leverage over the State of Israel.As a whole, the package stops short of the full upgrade in relations that was frozen after Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip in January 2009, but is highly significant nonetheless.Among other measures, the European Union will remove obstacles impeding Israel’s access to European government-controlled markets and enhance Israel’s co-operation with nine key EU agencies, including the European Police Office (Europol), the EU’s Judicial Cooperation Unit (Eurojust) and the European Space Agency (ESA).Notably absent from the package is the Agreement on Conformity, Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA), a trade agreement that seeks to eliminate technical barriers to trade in industrial products, with the objective of increasing European access to Israeli markets, and vice-versa.Although the European Commission and the European Council approved the ACAA in March 2010, ratification of the agreement has been held up in the European Parliament due to lobbying by pro-Palestinian activist groups, who argue that the agreement will benefit Israeli companies that do business in the disputed, so-called Occupied Territories.The Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament (AFET) on June 7 recommended that the ACAA be ratified, but its fate will be determined by the Committee on International Trade (INTA), which is scheduled to vote on the measure on September 18, 2012.In any event, the official EU statement announcing the upgrade in bilateral relations is also replete with condescending criticism of Israel, which the EU accuses of perpetrating a wide range of human rights abuses in the “occupied Palestinian territory (oPt)” and within Israel itself.Among other items, the statement refers to Israel’s obligation to protect the rights of the Arab-Palestinian minority, stressing the “importance to address it as a core problem in its own right.” The document also condemns the “excessive recourse by Israel to administrative detention.”The EU urges Israel “to refrain from actions which may…curtail the freedom of association and freedom of speech (of civil society)” and it calls on Israel to prosecute “settler extremists” for their “continuous violence and deliberate provocations against Palestinian civilians.”The statement “stresses Israel’s obligations regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian population” and condemns “developments on the ground which threaten to make a two-state solution impossible, such as, inter alia, the marked acceleration of settlement construction, ongoing evictions of Palestinians and the demolition of their housing and infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), including East Jerusalem, the worsening living conditions of the Palestinian population and serious limitations for the Palestinian Authority to promote the economic development of Palestinian communities, in particular in Area C.”The EU is also “concerned about reports on a possible resumption of construction of the separation barrier because the EU considers that the separation barrier where built on occupied land is illegal under international law, constitutes an obstacle to peace and threatens to make a two-state solution impossible.”The statement comes amid a wave of official EU criticism of Israel that is often one-sided, disproportionate and bordering on obsessive.In July, for example, the European Parliament passed a highly biased resolution accusing Israel of literally dozens of offenses against the Palestinian population, Palestinian institutions and even Arab Bedouins. The statement criticizes Israel for “expansion of settlements and settler violence, planning restrictions and the consequent acute house shortage, house demolitions, evictions and displacements, confiscation of land, difficult access to natural resources, and the lack of basic social services and assistance…” The resolution even accuses Israel of “creating an institutional and leadership vacuum in the local Palestinian population.”In June, EU “Foreign Minister” Catherine Ashton, who has a well-earned reputation for making statements that seek to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state, criticized Israeli policies that “are illegal under international law and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible.” Since assuming her post in December 2009, Ashton has never criticized Palestinian obstructionism and their setting impossible preconditions for entering genuine peace talks with Israel. (In March, Ashton famously equated the killing of three children at a Jewish school in France with “what is happening in Gaza.”)In May, the EU’s 27 foreign ministers unanimously condemned “the ongoing evictions and house demolitions in East Jerusalem, changes to the residency status of Palestinians…the prevention of peaceful Palestinian cultural, economic, social or political activities…the worsening living conditions of the Palestinian population…of jeopardizing the major achievements of the Palestinian Authority in state-building…the continuous settler violence and deliberate provocations against Palestinian civilians…” But nowhere does the document call on the Palestinian Authority to recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, a move that arguably more than any other would advance Palestinian aspirations for statehood.In January 2012, the EU published a document called “The EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem” which makes an urgent plea for the EU to adopt a more “active and visible” implementation of its policy towards Israel and the peace process.Authored by EU delegations to the Palestinian Authority, the document includes severe recommendations meant to strengthen Palestinian control over East Jerusalem and coerce Israel to change its policy in the West Bank.The document recommends that the European Union fund Palestinian construction projects in Area C of the West Bank without Israel’s cooperation, undermining Israeli control. But under the Oslo Accords, Area C is under full Israeli civil and security control; it contains all of Israel’s West Bank settlements and a small Palestinian population. The EU document also states that Israel’s policies are undermining the prospect of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, and calls on Israel to support Palestinian construction across Area C and in East Jerusalem.The report includes a radical proposal for “appropriate EU legislation to prevent/discourage financial transactions in support of settlement activity.” Under the proposal, the European Commission would use legislation to force European companies to stop doing business with companies involved in settlement construction and commercial activities.Recommendations include the preparation of a “blacklist” of settlers considered violent in order to consider later the option of banning them from entering the European Union. The document also seeks to encourage more PA activity and representation in East Jerusalem.The report advises senior EU figures visiting East Jerusalem to refrain from being escorted by official Israeli representatives or security personnel. In addition, the document encourages officials to instruct European tourism firms to refrain from supporting Israeli businesses located in East Jerusalem and to raise EU public awareness of Israeli products originating from the settlements or from East Jerusalem.In December 2011, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz obtained a classified working paper produced by European embassies in Israel, which recommended that the European Union should consider Israel’s treatment of its Arab population a “core issue, not second tier to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”The document is unprecedented in that it deals with internal Israeli issues. According to European diplomats and senior Foreign Ministry officials quoted by Haaretz, the document was written and sent to EU headquarters in Brussels behind the back of the Israeli government.Other issues the document deals with include “the lack of progress in the peace process, the continued occupation of the territories, Israel’s definition of itself as Jewish and democratic, and the influence of the Israeli Arab population.”The original document also included suggestions for action the EU should take, but these were removed from the final version at the insistence of several countries. Among these were the suggestion that the EU file an official protest every time a bill discriminating against Arabs passes a second reading in the Knesset, and that the EU ensure that all Arab towns have completed urban plans, “with each member state potentially ‘adopting’ a municipality to this end.”Haaretz reported that, according to a European diplomat involved in drafting the report, work on it began in 2010 at the initiative of Britain. The idea was to write a report that could be debated by a forum of EU foreign ministers. At some point, however, several countries, among them the Czech Republic, Poland and the Netherlands, expressed objections to its contents and the document was watered down.Also in December, four EU members of the UN Security Council issued an angry joint statement branding Israeli “settlements” in Palestinian occupied territories and East Jerusalem as “illegal under international law.” The statement said: “We call on the Israeli government to reverse these steps. The viability of the Palestinian state that we want to see and the two-state solution that is essential for Israel’s long-term security are threatened by the systematic and deliberate expansion of settlements.”While the EU continues to exert pressure on Israel, Jerusalem has been unable to extract meaningful concessions from Brussels. For example, the EU has once again rejected an Israeli request that the bloc designate the Lebanon-based Hezbollah as a terrorist group.Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently launched a new diplomatic push to convince the EU to outlaw Hezbollah following the murders of five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver on July 18. Israel blames Hezbollah for the suicide bombing at Bulgaria’s Burgas airport.Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, whose country currently heads the EU presidency, said there is “no consensus among the EU member states for putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list of the organization,” and claimed that there is “no tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism.”Lieberman has also failed to persuade Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, to “intervene” on Israel’s behalf in a controversy regarding Tunisia’s desire to include a clause in its new constitution making normalized relations with Israel a criminal offense.As these examples and many others indicate, Israel should be under no illusion that the recent “upgrading” of bilateral relations with the European Union will end European hostility toward the Jewish state. Quite to the contrary; Israel should be expecting an increase in European meddling in its internal affairs.

Soeren Kern is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York-basedGatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him onFacebook.

(stonegateinstitute.org) Last Friday’s downgrading of France and Austria by credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s has left the eurozone, the group of 17 European countries using the euro as their currency, with just four countries with a triple A rating. Of these four Germany is the only one that was not given a negative outlook. Indeed, S&P thinks that the Netherlands, Finland and Luxemburg risk a further downgrade this year or next year.This is bad news for the euro. The creditworthiness of the euro bailout fund, EFSF, depends on the ability of eurozone countries with the top rating to provide enough money to bail out eurozone countries in financial difficulties. With France, the eurozone’s second largest economy, out of the top league the pressure on the four remaining countries rises. This explains why the Netherlands, Finland and Luxemburg were given a negative outlook. If these countries lose their ratings as well, even Germany, Europe’s largest economy, risks losing its triple A rating. The euro is dragging all the eurozone countries down with it.What Europe’s politicians should do is draw up a contingency plan for a eurozone break-up, providing a blueprint for an exit of countries such as Greece and Portugal that urgently need to devaluate to save their economies. In last Friday’s Financial Times, Nomura Bank’s strategist Jens Nordvig gives a second reason why the eurozone needs such a plan, which must also offer guidance on orderly redenomination of euro-denominated assets and obligations in a break-up scenario. It would alleviate investor worries about such assets and improve the capital flow situation and funding costs. “Ironically,” he points out, “spelling out guidelines for a eurozone break-up may -– at this stage in the crisis -– even help to reduce the risk of the break-up itself.”Unfortunately, it does not look as if such a plan is being considered. Instead of drawing up contingency plans, Europe’s politicians continue their vain efforts to save the current European monetary union. When S&P announced the downgrading, angry European politicians, refusing to face economic reality, began to shoot the messenger. “It is not the rating agencies that dictate the policies of France,” François Baroin, France’s finance minister said defiantly. Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann called S&P’s decision “incomprehensible.” German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble warned against “overestimating the ratings agencies in their assessments.”EU monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn, a Finn, called S&P’s decision “inconsistent” and said the agency had made mistakes in the past. Internal market commissioner Michel Barnier, a Frenchman, said S&P’s evaluation did “not take into account recent progress.”Barnier is working on plans to establish a semi-official EU credit rating agency. Barnier has been castigating the three big agencies in the world -– S&P, Moody’s and Fitch -– since the European sovereign debt crisis began. He argues that these three American agencies do not grasp Europe’s economic realities.The last thing Europe’s politicians want to do is acknowledge that their own centralizing policy of imposing a common currency on such widely diverging economies and cultures as Greece and Finland, has caused Europe’s current economic predicament. Instead, they blame capitalism, the financial sector and the “greed” of speculators and investors.To “solve the debt crisis,” French president Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a plan to introduce a eurozone financial transaction tax. Sarkozy is in the middle of a reelection campaign and has to convey the message to French voters that the banks, not he, is responsible for the current crisis, and that he will punish them for it. While investors need to be reassured and have their worries laid to rest, Sarkozy proposes to tax them.Last week, Sarkozy received the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Schäuble and Baroin have been asked to draft proposals for a financial transaction tax by March. Last September, the European Commission proposed a financial transaction tax of 0.1% on bond and share trades, and 0.01% on derivatives. The Commission expects that such a tax could raise €57bn a year in the EU -– about €10bn of which would be Germany.Economists warn, however, that the tax will leave a big hole in Europe’s public finances. France and Germany seem prepared to introduce the tax on their own. At best, the Franco-German alliance will be able to persuade the eurozone to go along, but Britain -– an EU member, although not a eurozone member -– will definitely not join. Hence, if the tax plans materialize, the financial centers of Frankfurt and Paris are likely to move their activities to London, as they did in the 1980s, after Sweden introduced the tax: over 90% of its traders in bonds, equities and derivatives moved from Stockholm to London.The results could be devastating. Germany, whose economy slipped into reverse the last quarter of 2011, contracted by 0.25%. Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy is prepared to support Sarkozy’s proposed tax on financial transactions, but said it should apply to the whole 27-nation EU and not just the 17 eurozone nations. Merkel and Sarkozy will also have to persuade governments in the Netherlands and Ireland.The Dutch federation of employers has calculated that the introduction of a financial transaction tax would cost the Dutch economy between €7.5bn and €24bn. The Dutch pension funds have warned that the tax would diminish Dutch pensions by 10%, as the tax would cost them €3bn a year. Unlike many other European countries’ pension systems, which are pay-as-you-go — in which the benefits of the pensioners are paid by the current workforce — the Dutch pension system is largely financed from the contributions pensioners paid in the past and from the return on the investment of these contributions.It remains to be seen whether the Dutch are willing to bring such a huge sacrifice. French President Sarkozy, however, has announced that France is willing to proceed unilaterally with the introduction of the tax.Sarkozy’s motives, however, are political rather than economic. As François Hollande, his Socialist challenger in the presidential elections, said after last Friday’s downgrade: “It is not France that has been downgraded; it is Sarkozy’s government.” Sarkozy therefore feels compelled to levy a tax on the so-called greedy investors and capitalist speculators who, he claims, are responsible for the current crisis.If Sarkozy loses the elections, Europe risks being saddled with a Socialist-governed France.That is bad. If Sarkozy wins thanks to his financial transaction tax, that is bad, too. Either way, France will suffer. And with France, the euro and the whole European Union.Brace yourselves: the eurocrisis has only just begun.

hey… I have an idea… let’s centralize some more! …they can always blame the banks and finance for it.

France, Britain and Germany have called on the United Nations and the European Union to present a ‘peace plan’ for the Middle East, and to effectively replace the Untied States as the facilitator of ‘negotiations.’

Putting the job in the hands of the EU and the UN would sideline the United States, Israel’s closest ally which has tried unsuccessfully for months to get face-to-face negotiations going, as well as Russia, an ally of the Palestinians.The big question mark is whether the United States would allow the Europeans and UN to take the lead in trying to resolve the standoff, and that is likely to depend on whether the Israelis give a green light, the diplomats said.The Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to President Barack Obama’s target date of September 2011 for an agreement, but negotiations collapsed weeks after they restarted last September.The Palestinians insist they will not resume peace talks until Israel halts settlement building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War which the Palestinians want for their future state.

And that is one reason why negotiations aren’t likely to resume despite the fact that the Europeans promise

The diplomats said the three European countries have delivered the message in key capitals – including Washington and Jerusalem – that if the parameters of a final settlement are endorsed, the Palestinians will return to the negotiating table.

The diplomat said the United States will almost certainly never accept a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence, or any other measure that does not include a negotiated peace agreement.That’s why the three Europeans are pressing for the parameters of a settlement which would hopefully lead to a resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the diplomat said.

The good news here is that the Europeans’ votes in the Security Council are apparently not wrapped up yet.Would letting the EU and the UN run the show for a while be a good idea? Well, maybe, if it means that the US will stop playing neutral and get out on our side like most Americans want to do.